


Yellow Ivory

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Not explicit dersecest, suppose you can read into it, theyre more friends but i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:46:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You cry ugly, you know it. Rose lets it leak out little by little when anger or frustration weaken her hold on herself. She is prideful and rational and in control even when her emotions are beginning to run lose. You know that about her. Even after all these years, one look at her and you still know it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yellow Ivory

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of an in spirit sequel to "Blue Amber." I wrote this when I was going through a tough time and a lot of confusing emotions and fears about the future, and I think that is reflected a lot in the subject matter. Nevertheless, I still like it.

Your fist cracks against the broken brick, nails dragging over and splitting on the mortar as your legs give out and you stumble forward, drunken coordination doing you no favors as you seek to escape into the dank of the alleyway.

You'd been out drinking. It's not unusual for you. Tonight'd been a different bar, though, far removed from your typical haunts which hadn't felt  _right_  this particular night. 

Of course, you should have known not to trust the infernal instinct that told you to try something  _new_ , to break the safe and affable routine that you'd set up. Risks and danger and adventures had been the stuff of your younger days. They didn't have any place amongst the life you held now. Your life was straight shots of whiskey instead of Palomas and Manhattans and gin-shaken strawberries, and trying to force down a White Russian had clearly been pushing it. 

When you were younger, when you had ambition and when you were bright-eyed on the brilliant brick road to big-shotdom with a fistful of ruby shoes and plucky terriers. You'd big dreams of breaking it huge, sugary sweet wishes making your fingers sticky in yearning, your thumb stuck in the pie before it'd even finished baking. But no such luck, no sir, not for you Mr. Strider, thank you for your time but this just isn't what America wants right now, period, exit's that way! The industry'd shut you out and before you knew it you'd wasted your prime frittering away on screenplays that were, in your mind,  _too_  revolutionary and  _too_  groundbreaking and  _too_  choked full of subversive humor and morbid morality for the common audience. 

In your head you hadn't just fizzled out and faded, no--fuck that.Your fall from grace had been nothing if not  _spectacular_. Cinematic even. Yeah. Your shitty apartment was the goddamn Xanadu where you spent the aftermath of your titanic and controversial crash to earth amidst memories of your long lost youth, of your own hypothetical--

You trip as your stomach heaves, churning milky white over your lips. 

\--- _Rosebud._

Your back hits the walls. Your legs give out and you sink. The smell of rotting trash fills your nostrils as your ass hits concrete. 

You shut your eyes tight and fist your fingers into your hair because damn it, why the hell, why the  _hell_ out of every damn bar in downtown did she happen to show up to the one you'd decided to come to on a stupid whim, on a twist of instinct.  

You hadn't seen her in  _years_. Ten years maybe, Less. More. You'd seen her on the TV, did that count? She had a new book coming out soon and all.

It'd been five days since she'd been on Letterman, two since Good Morning America, eleven since 60 Minutes and a fourth of your life since you'd last talked to her face to face. 

_Hah._ You really don't like to remember that last meeting.  _God damn._

In retrospect there hadn't been all that much drama. No theatrics. No screams, no shouting. But measured-- _paced_ \--definitive words. Angry words. Bitter words. Final words. Word that hadn't left no leeway, no wiggle room to stick a finger in and pry open all the scabby cuts burned there by crossed wires, frayed copper, and miscommunications. 

Your vision sways. The sickly sweet smell of fruit graces your nostrils as you suddenly curl over and heave between your legs. Your sunglasses clatter off your head and splatter into the sick. 

When you open your eyes there's a peach, or a plum, or some kind of fruit next to the spreading pool of vomit, half of it rotted away and smashed into the sidewalk. Its skin torn at the top and bubbling amber so you can see the hard stone underneath. The blackened core behind the yellow meat all sick and sour. 

_Jesus fuck that symbolism is ostentatious as shit it's like it knows the right when and where to fork it in you. You thought you'd already done your time in narrative clichés and mis-en-sc_ è _ne schlock._

_But nah. Your life is just a paling parody of art._

You clench your hand over your knee and you half sob half choke out before you raise your fist and claw it into the thigh of your jeans. Your finger stings from a ribbed and bleeding nail that you drag across your cheek as you put your face in your hands. 

_Why_. 

Why, why why holy cock-shit why did  _she_  have to be here?

Had she come to find you? Search you out and pry you outta the woodwork? Or is this just some form of coincidence, some serendipity? That doesn't seem all that likely, since she was in Times Square just two mornings ago. No, no she's sought you out, you'd  _seen_  how she'd looked in the bar right before you'd booked it outside. Poised, that same purposed look she'd held the last time you'd seen her. Folded hands tucked under her chin and coy glances outta the periphery--pale, porcelain, perfect. 

Shit though, it hardly matters why she's here in the first place, because it's really stupidly too  _late_. The infection has long settled sick and solid in your stomach, an inconsolable of fetid flesh curled thick and permanent. For too long silence has grown cancerous in your chest. You're rotting. She can't  _fix_  this. Man, you doubt she even wants to. She's probably just here to show you up, or chew you out again, reopen wounds still fetid and fresh--maybe revel in her Daedalic luck of the draw while you keep on drowning below. 

You cry ugly, you know it. Rose lets it leak out little by little when anger or frustration weaken her hold on herself. She is prideful and rational and in control even when her emotions are beginning to run lose. You  _know_  that about her. Even after all these years, one look at her and you still  _know_  it. 

You, on the other hand, break down completely, pride and ego thrown completely to the wind when something scares you enough to make you  _lose_  it. When you lose your cool the heat in your heart and your face and your tears explodes over the threshold and boils in the warm urban air. 

Right now, you're losing it. You're losing it amidst the trash and filth of an alleyway, where you're drunk and cold and the dampness in your pants could be booze or piss or whatever, it doesn't really matter because either way you're  _pathetic_. 

Clicks and shuffles on the sidewalk echo in the alley but you don't bother to look up, you know it's her, you know. You feel a wash of shame come over you.

_What a joke._

You tear your hands out of your hair and your head twists up, your face masked in bitterness and anger and hate so much hate and sickness as you scream at her.

She stutters to a stop. You can't bring yourself to look at her face, you don't want to see any hurt or anger or smugness or whatever that might be there. You scrub a wrist across your mouth and shudder, sliding sideways against the wall. 

You expect her to leave, but as her footsteps start up again you hear them getting louder. Your chin rolls down to your chest. 

She crouches before you, the cream of her white thighs pressed together right before your eyes. You look up.

Her mouth is set in a black line. It's not as plump and perfect as you remember it, even from a couple days back when you say it on the TV. No Letterman lips here. 

Her face is more worn than you remembered it, too. Crow's feet creased in the corner of her eyes, folds on her forehead, speckles of varicose red and purple in her cheeks and neck. 

You follow the road of wrinkles on her neck, winding down to the realization that maybe-- _maybe--_

That maybe there's some ugliness there, too. Hidden in the small shadows of her face--brought on by the weight of ten years of woefully under-spoken mistakes. 

Maybe you're not the only one who is ugly, not the only one who has made mistakes, not the only one who has stumbled into rotting crevasses drunken and lost and wailing out for help. 

Maybe you've built up Rose as a goddess in your head, as the symbol of everything you're not, as the icon of mistakes and faults and could have beens. One of those mosaics comprised of tiny pictures except every picture is a visual vignette from every shitty thing you've ever done and everything you've ever failed at. 

She worms her hand between your back and the wall, nudging you forward. You sink forward, body curling like a child into her waiting shoulder.  

You try to make your mouth form words, trying to summon enough saliva to say what you want to say, what you need to say, but she hushes you and rubs her hand over your back, nails catching into the fabric. 

There will be time. There will be time when Rose takes you back to wherever she is staying in town; and when she holds you on the bed and your eyes are dry and red and full of the lavender smell of her neck there will be time for the two of you to say everything that needs to be said. 

For now, it's okay not to speak, okay to remain silent and let the words that need to be said linger between mind and mouth for a while longer. 

Rose holds you and helps you up, one of your arms slung about her shoulder as she supports you from beneath. 

You rise up from the ground and you feel like your head is made of helium lifting the rag-doll torso and limbs up like ribbons and streamers--vibrant colored trappings to the rising realities now blooming in your brain . 

With Rose wedged under you you're able to shuffle out and onto the sidewalk. The sky vaults above you, hemmed by skyscrapers but still scores freer than the alley. Steam mists from manholes and marbles into the breaths of the people walking by. 

It still smells of gas and grime out here, but the dense scent of rotten fruit and spoiled meat and stale booze is cut and gone and replaced with a freshness, a form of urban clarity that lifts the fog in your head and funnels it through your mouth in a long sigh. 

Maybe you will not die in Xanadu, after all.


End file.
